President Rafael Correa claimed in September that he would step aside and allow someone else from the ruling Alianza País (AP) to run for president 15 months from now – provided that special someone could guarantee a victory. As presidential candidacy declarations go, this is about as indirect as it gets. It means that unless Correa makes a conscious effort to groom a successor, he will be seeking re-election. Virtually all of the bigwigs in the AP, the men who co-founded Correa’s citizens’ revolution and might have hoped to take the top job at some point, have been sidelined by Correa since he came to power in January 2007.
Correa recently admitted to feeling tired after nearly five years at the helm, but he also conceded that there was strong pressure on him to stand again from various sectors (and probably also himself). This is understandable. According to a survey released by Consulta Mitofsky in early October, Correa is the most popular head of state in Latin America, with 75% support. Not only is this the same level of support as he enjoyed in a similar survey in April 2007, shortly after he came to power, but it is also eight percentage points greater than second-placed Juan Manuel Santos, who only took office in Colombia last August.
Correa is a remarkable electoral success story in a country not accustomed to the longevity of its heads of state. On 3 October Ecuador’s electoral court, Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE), registered AP to participate in the general elections on 20 January 2013 (see sidebar). By this point Correa will have served as president for six years. Nobody since Sixto Durán-Ballén (1992-1996) has served a full four-year term and nobody since Correa’s political idol, Eloy Alfaro (1895-1901), emerged from the lower classes in the 19th century to lead the “liberal revolution” has served for six years. If Correa were to run for re-election and win, then by the conclusion of his term in 2017 he would be the longest serving president in Ecuador’s history.
Correa’s admission of fatigue came as a surprise for a man whose powerful charisma, and reputation as a workaholic micromanager, gives the impression of indefatigability. It could be, however, that having seen the recent decline in health of a regional ally, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, another subscriber to the concept of hiperpresidencialismo, in his tireless pursuit of implementing a political vision, he just might be considering stepping down for the sake of his health.
Against this hypothesis, it is important to note the caveat that accompanied Correa’s statement that he might be prepared to pass on the baton to someone from within his movement - any successor must be able to guarantee winning election in 2013.
But who else could possibly command such support? When Correa came to power in January 2007 the answer to this question would have been much simpler. The obvious choice would have been Alberto Acosta, the former president of the constituent assembly and a co-founder of the citizens’ revolution. Correa parted ways acrimoniously with Acosta, however, after he insisted that the assembly needed more time to finish the constitution and refused to cut debate time. Infuriated at what he saw as an unnecessary delay that could come at a high political cost, Correa forced Acosta out. Acosta differed markedly in style from Correa, refusing to indulge in the latter’s frequent ad hominem attacks on the opposition, “the infantile Left”, “the mediocre media” and the hierarchy of Ecuador’s umbrella indigenous organisation, Conaie.
Next in the pecking order would probably have been Fander Falconí, also a co-founder of the citizens’ revolution, but Correa dismissed Falconí as foreign minister in January 2010 for deceiving him by “pandering to an infantile ecological movement” over his government’s ambitious Yasuní-ITT environmental project, which seeks to raise US$3.6bn to leave oil deposits untapped in the Yasuní biosphere reserve in the northern Amazon.
Then there was Gustavo Larrea, another heavyweight co-founder of the political project who served as defence minister. Larrea broke ranks with Correa over the national referendum in May. He accused Correa of using the referendum to concentrate more power in his own hands, using the proposed judicial reform to make a mockery of the pretension of checks and balances in Ecuador by empowering Correa to hire and fire judges as he sees fit for 18 months. Larrea launched his own political party in February. He called it Participación, so-named because he argued that Correa was restricting participation within the citizens’ revolution.
The sole exception, the one co-founder of this movement who has not been estranged and remains by Correa’s side, is Ricardo Patiño, the current foreign minister. But Patiño appears to be more of a jack of all trades, rather than cut from presidential cloth, having served in every senior ministry in the cabinet under Correa. Lenín Moreno, much like his vice-presidential peer in Venezuela, Elías Jaua, is more of a steadfast loyalist and a “yes man” than a leader-in-waiting likely to step out of Correa’s shadow. The same can be said of the president of the national assembly, Fernando Cordero, a loyal acolyte who lacks the charisma to follow in Correa’s footsteps.
So, who does this leave as the most likely current alternative to Correa should he choose to step aside? With the exception of Patiño, only three ministers have served under Correa constantly since he came to power in January 2007 – all three of them female. Ecuador has never had a female president. It would suit Correa’s pretensions to make the country more representative. Ecuador had never had an indigenous ambassador until Patiño designated Ricardo Ulcuango as the new ambassador to Bolivia in August, and followed this up by naming Segundo Andrango as the new ambassador to El Salvador a month later, to project the country’s plurinationality, enshrined in the constitution, abroad.
Foremost among these three women is Doris Soliz, the minister for political coordination and decentralised autonomous government. Soliz was minister for population, social movements and citizen participation when Correa came to power. She is senior enough in the government that Correa occasionally allows her to operate as an unofficial spokeswoman. Then, there is Nathalie Cely, who has been minister of coordination for production, employment and competitiveness since June 2009 (before that she was minister of coordination for social development). Finally, there is María de los Angeles Duarte, who is minister of transport and public works but started off as minister of urban development and housing. It is also worth mentioning Katiuska King who, though a comparative newcomer, being appointed minister for economic policy in April 2010, already seems to have considerable clout in the cabinet.
The overriding concern for Correa, however, is that his citizens’ revolution continues beyond 2013, whether he stands or not, and although he might like to take a breather for four years and return triumphantly in 2017, this will remain his primary consideration. On 30 September, while addressing tens of thousands of supporters in the north of Quito to mark the first anniversary of the police mutiny which led to him being holed up in a military hospital before being rescued by the army, Correa insisted that what has entered common parlance as 30-S was an attempted coup d’état - and that the citizens’ revolution remains vulnerable to attack. “Do you think it is a coincidence that the four coups in the twenty first century have been against left-wing progressive governments: Venezuela 2002, Bolivia 2008, Honduras 2009, which met with success, and Ecuador 2010?” he asked rhetorically.
- Party registration
The opposition Partido Roldosista Ecuatoriano (PRE), of former president Abdalá Bucaram (1996-1997), and the left-wing Movimiento Popular Democrático (MPD), which had been allied with the Correa administration before going into opposition over teachers’ protests two years ago, were also registered along with the ruling Alianza País (AP) by the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE). A further 30 parties are also seeking registration.
- “El Empujón”
“Don’t push me, you are talking with the president of the Republic; if you push me again I’ll have you arrested.” President Rafael Correa was captured yelling these words at Rosa Guadalupe when she repeatedly tried to catch hold of him to complain that her mother was not receiving the medicine she needed, while he was visiting a hospital on 29 September. The comments quickly became a source of humour on the social networking site Twitter, with someone sending the state paper El Telégrafo a tongue-in-cheek video entitled “El Empujón” (“The Push”) to put alongside “Muchedumbre: 30S”, the official documentary film about the events of 30 September 2010.
